Benchmark/Graphics Update - Show your WoL's before and after

[TheDustyOne]

Outside a couple of tweaks, I'm probably going to keep my character as is.

The biggest thing that seems to cause the biggest upset (outside the skin being too wax-like) is the unflattering lighting which you can see in the middle comparison. The skin in the shade looks worse in comparison to the current game I feel. The lack of the static highlight on eyes is also throwing some off, and it threw me off as well in certain lights.



She still looks fine in the benchmark proper though, so I can't complain too much, it's just a few angles and lights that throw me off.

[Doozer]

I'm not going back to get perfect lighting so people who will disagree can be satisfied. This is such a downgrade. His 'tattoo' (or winged eyeshadow, as I call it) is almost nothing now, his eyes are dead and sunken in. The benchmark itself doesn't make it any better.

How did some races come out looking exactly the same and others make people want to change their face or race entirely? I liked my character before. Now I don't know what to do. I constantly had mixed feelings about my au ra back in the day and after changing to male viera I was really happy. I don't want his appearance to change.

[Equitable_Remedy]

These are all going to be "I hate all change" threads aren't they?

Yes. If you were here for the stat squish discourse - this will be worse.

The only thing that people on the fourms/reddit/discord hate more than FF14 the way it is is FF14 changing in any way.

[Snowroark]

My bunboy UwU
(had to use an in-benchmark screenshot because the character creator does not keep my current hairstyle)

current version vs benchmark:

[Somnolence]

Makes me wonder if there is some forced AA going on.

My screenshots are with forced DLAA, but obviously its not the culprit given screenshots by other people.

I bet for this graphics update they upscaled all textures with AI. And since face texture has little variations the details were smoothed out so it looks flatter now.

Also the character creator has terrible lightning, it looks better in actual benchmark:

It seems when zoomed-in we can see skin has pores now ?

Too bad the characters seem to have same amount of polygons.

[Souljacker]

Yes. If you were here for the stat squish discourse - this will be worse.

The only thing that people on the fourms/reddit/discord hate more than FF14 the way it is is FF14 changing in any way.

I'd normally be right there with you - stat squish? Stuff like that is necessary. Ability squish? Yea, we're getting button bloat again. Bring it on. Rotation changes? Looking at that old 300-or-whatever-step summoner rotation could literally trigger seizures.

But this? Some of these changes are really strange. Why are all the WoL EXCEPT their "canon" guy changed to look like children? And it's not just some of them, it's like all the female models have been aged down to teen, pre-teen years and the lalafell look more like plastic dolls than ever. Something isn't right with this design direction.

[Revguri]

The eyelash shadow or whatever needs to go or be optional, the old face 2 sculpt needs to be reverted. It literally took the life outta my highlander. Going to need a tremendous amount of cope to get through Dawnwalker looking like this.

[Roda]

Before/after



I think my viera came out more intact than my miqo'te tbh.

[Embran]

My bunboy UwU
(had to use an in-benchmark screenshot because the character creator does not keep my current hairstyle)

current version vs benchmark:

How do you even get Styled for Hire in the benchmark? That's what my highlander uses lol.

[Anarnee]

They murdered my girl... the dark pupils combined with the hellsguard nose rhinarium/mark being so much lighter is not a winning change.

Yeah, it's so incredibly upsetting to look at my Femroe. I've only done three of them but they all look off. The skin colors are desaturated, the lip shapes are very different. The way they did the eyelashes on a lot of the eyes make the faces look sharper... It looks like my girls have permanent /sneer on and completely changes the impression of them.



Skin color is LIGHTER and washed out and while I can make her a little darker to kinda correct it, I can't do that with my girl who is already on the darkest setting.



She looks ashy, greener and washed out and I can't make her darker. Her upper lip is thinner too.



It's so baffling that they lightened the ash on the noses so much, and the black eye shadow/liner. It's barely there at all.